Category: Crime & punishment

Saturday morning thotz

I don’t agree with everything this person says about swearing, but I remember reading somewhere that people who are freaked out about swearing are less egalitarian than people who aren’t.  Not particularly safe for work.

Believe me when I tell you this is cool. SFW.

Paul sent around an email yesterday announcing that a court date has been set for the woman who knocked John off his motorcycle.  It had been looking increasingly like nothing was going to happen, but the slow grinding wheels of justice are finally in motion.  May 27th nothing will likely happen except her entering a plea.  Paul will keep us all apprised.

I had a very productive day yesterday; I replaced the burner I covered in melted plastic; re-upped on the lease and gave the landlord six months worth of checks; did a load of laundry, worked on half a dozen songs with Paul and wheedled him into going to the first Tuesday at Jericho for the year in exchange for me working up Erica’s Song well enough to perform it, and man his guitar support is tasty as always), got plates and insurance for the car, cooked chicken schnitzel with quinoa salad for supper (Paul made the salad and insisted on sending me home with some, and it had so much garlic in it it practically triggered an altered state of consciousness); messed with the intonation on my mandolin now that it’s been repaired (sounds okay now); almost wrote a new tune and replaced my bank card which was compromised again if you can believe it (somebody tried to take $500 out of my account in Surrey three days ago and so the baloney alarm was triggered).

I of course find it screechingly funny that my bank knows I’d never take $500 out in Surrey.  Welcome to the Panopticon.

Jeff is likely off to Victoria and will likely be bringing back Andrew, so I have some ‘comfort of guests’ things to do today, not that I mind.  House guests are fun.  For three days, anyway.

an open letter to Kash Heed

Dear Sir,

My initial reaction when I learned that the BC Liberals think it’s a good idea to axe the mandatory inquiry after a death in custody was, wow.  No more coroner’s inquests into government embarrassments.  Maybe articles like this will magically go away.

Then I thought, you know, just because I’m a tubby left leaning atheist with queer sympathies and anarchist tendencies doesn’t mean I have to even react to it.  After all, a 51 year old white woman who lives quietly in Burnaby (honestly, my neighbours probably wouldn’t even know I was here if my cats didn’t crap in their gardens, and if my brother’s car didn’t rumble in and out of here twice a day) doesn’t really need to put ‘death in custody’ on the top of her most feared methods of checking out.  I’d just pull out all of my priviliges and a harassed looking lawyer would show up and I’d waltz out of whatever misunderstanding had occurred.

Then I thought, well, sheeeeit.  It’s not like the BC Liberals do 5/8ths of a listless denial about deaths in custody right NOW, so why should anybody care that they are legally mandating what’s happening in truth in the cold light of spring, 2010?

But won’t someone please think of the children?  I tried to think of how an appeal to the interests of children might get spun by the BC Liberals.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of children growing up in BC – and other places, thank goodness – who want to be po-po when they grow up.

They want the gun, the badge, the pulling prostitutes over and getting free blow jobs in cars.  They want the skittery way meth-high teenagers deke down alleyways just before the Tazer comes out.

I kid, I kid.  Really what people want when they grow up wanting to be cops is to be on the right side, to catch dirtbags, to jail pedophiles, to bust drunk drivers.  Nobody who wants to be a cop when they are little thinks about the mental hardships and physical perils of being po-po.

Right now all police departments are having a bitch of a time hiring.  The RCMP nationally is looking to hire 8000 newbies in the next five years to handle resignations and retirements.  Things are so bad that they are hiring – so I have heard – people with known mental illnesses.

So I guess one way of looking at it is that the BC Liberals are canning inquests into deaths in custody as a recruiting ploy.  Come and join our police forces, all those with barely concealed personality problems and contempt for minorities!  If you get a little enthusiastic with a scumbag and he or she dies, not only will you not lose your job, your badge or your benefits, you’ll never have to face the scorn of the public and you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that it was all a tragic misunderstanding.

Good job, Kash, hope that works out for you and your somewhat tinted kinfolks in the years ahead.  Yeah, I know you were the first Indo-Canadian chief of police in Canadian History, and that you have a storied career.  I just have one last question to ask.  Given that the Chief Coroner in BC is a political appointment given to a retired cop, do you have your eyes on that job after your political career moves away from you?  Cause if the omnibus bill passes, the Chief Coroner’s job just got easier.  That’s what I call planning ahead.

Peace love and anarchy,

Allegra

Give me a frakking break you asshats!!!!

Okay, thanks to the incompetence being shown by the cops and the Crown in Victoria (and no, I’m not talking about it on my blog because I don’t have permission to) I FnCKING HATE the cops and their apologists in the halls of the legislature of BC –  and everything to do with them right now.  But this latest is FnCKING OUTRAGEOUS.  They are hiding it in an omnibus bill.  The BC government wants to END mandatory inquests into deaths in custody.

Get off your asses and protest.  If you think that giving cops a licence to kill teenagers, immigrants and First Nations people, and that the right of the government to appoint a retired cop as Chief Coroner, makes BC a better place to live, you can go back to sleep now.

Could not have happened to a nicer guy

I don’t know if any of you have been following along after the career of Joe Arpaio, the meanest sheriff in the US.  He’s actually a full-bore sociopath, from what I can gather, whose office and cadre of patriotic meanies have been abusive towards pretty much anybody they could abuse while they had their guns strapped on.  The ACLU has had at least three motions in play at any given time against him for the last five years.  Here’s a timeline of his reign of terror, and I fail to see how you could call it anything else.  One that reaches into 2009 is here.

If ever there was a reason to distrust democracy, it’s in his person.  He’s been re-elected five times.

Anyway, a whole slew of emails which were supposed to have disappeared, to his advantage, have reappeared.  Now things will get interesting.

I’m recollecting several times a day the choir singing in church on Sunday.  It was so good I cried. Marcy told me after church she could see me grinning in the back as she addressed us… and well I know that feeling of what it is like to see a friendly face up there.

I am doing a lot better, although I wish the weather would decide it’s spring.  There are skunk cabbages in Lynn Valley now, so it is officially spring by my standards.

Ranking God and the Seattle transit system

Seattle Bus Driver gets beaten up. This story caught my eye for a number of reasons.  The biggest one is that the bus driver is forgiving her attacker.

Reviewing church. *this article was disabled.  I have no idea, as it was current.  Anyway, it was about a pastor who’s paying $50 to the unchurched to come to services and review them. [URL fixed by JR 2013May21]

Brain empty, repost

Keith sent me the following email, so I am reposting it.  The apple don’t fall far from the tree, as a rule.

A Regular Canadian Family.

… Aren’t they cute? Not even remotely.

Check this out: Montreal mafia Don’s son killed

This is so awesome I have to write some of my take on the yarn.
The dead guy is the son of a man named Vito Corleo-excuse me Rizzuto. Vito is doing a stretch in the USA for racketeering, and quote “being present at” unquote the murder of three made men in 1981. Vito is due to be handed back over to Canadian authorities in 2012.
This guy’s Wikipedia page is unbelievable. Apparently the Montreal Mafia is huge. As will be the likely response to the slaying of Nick Rizzuto. These guys have a larger geographical territory than any of the legendary/mythical Five Families, and apparently while nominally under the Bonnanno banner, the Rizzuto rival any Families in money and influence.

The cherry on the cake for me is the fact that Vito may in time be extradited to Italy in connection to- what do I hear? Murder? Nope. Extortion? Nuh-uh. Bribery of public officials? Not even close. Alleged money laundering in the finances of a public works project to build a fucking bridge. From Sicily to mainland Italy.

All we need now is a witch doctor to resurrect Mario Puzo, so he can make a movie out of this man’s story. Or maybe the crew that made Bon Cop Bad Cop could do it.